Professionals advise: how to improve the quality of smartphone photos

A recent attempt to count the number of photos in existence revealed a number of 12.4 trillion pictures. And most of them were taken after the invention of the smartphone. However, experts say that quantity does not mean quality. The vast majority of photos stored in our phones are beyond criticism.

The Times asked a professional photographer from London, Marysa Dowling, a question: "Is it possible to take quality photos with a smartphone and what do you need to do so?" Marysa answered the first part of the question in the affirmative and gave some good advice on this.

First, she said, learn and follow the principles of proper lighting, "they can work wonders."

Second, and probably most importantly, use the many options of your phone's camera, in particular, work with the portrait mode that is available on iPhones and Androids. "This is an imitation of depth of field - a wide camera aperture that blurs the background. This way, you focus on the subjects. They 'pop up' and look much stronger and more interesting."

Thirdly, why do some pictures look natural and others don't? "It all comes down to the connection between the photographer and the subject," says Marysa. "If there is a rapport between them, the quality of the photo is much higher."

Another way to achieve naturalness is not to focus the subject's attention on the camera. "For example, you like children. Just talk to them, and if you move your phone out of their line of sight, they may not notice that you are filming them."

"When it comes to selfies," said Marysa, "they often turn out terrible because people have to twist their arm to reach the shutter button, which causes the camera to be at an angle that distorts the image."

Therefore, she advises taking selfies using the volume up or down button on the side, which is often easier to reach than the photo button.

Another tip from Marysa in this regard is to look at the lens, not at yourself, when taking a selfie.

In addition, the expert recommends:

• Do not choose obvious backgrounds and do not try to cram everything into them at once
• Use filters, color correction options, and bold, flashy colors.

To do this, Marysa Dowling advises experimenting more with the settings edit page, the saturation mode, which can enhance colors, and the shine mode, which gives more brightness.

By the way, she believes that "making the subject look away from the camera will relieve the model's internal tension," which will definitely benefit the picture.

One of the most difficult things to photograph, according to Marysa, is a group shot, because "it's hard to achieve variety. If you want to break up the monotony, the professional advises, "don't put everyone on the same level and think about how people interact with each other."

And finally, Marysa noted: "Don't shoot 'statues', shoot 'dynamics'. "Modern phones," she said, "are great at capturing movement, which by all accounts looks better in a photo than a still pose.